Exhibition
2ANNAS anniversary exhibition “ALTERNATĪVA: Traces from the Underground” invites audiences to experience the festival’s archive, memories, and the alternative mindset.
From April 10th until May 4th, in the cultural space RAA, located at Matisa Street 8, the creative factory Veldze, Riga International Short Film Festival’s 2ANNAS 30th anniversary exhibition “ALTERNATĪVA: Traces from the Underground” will be displayed. The exhibition is free of charge.
The exhibition is one of 2ANNAS key events of the year, which positions the festival’s 30-year history as a dynamic cultural process rather than a linear retrospective. At the core of the exhibition is the alternative as a need for other forms of expression, voices, and spaces in which it is possible to think, create, and watch the unordinary.
“Over these thirty years, cultural processes have always been accompanied by a demanding need for alternative, for other forms, voices, spaces,” emphasizes the exhibition’s curator, Kristiana Karklina.
The exhibition explores the tension between the visible and hidden, between the official and the peripheral cultural space, where short film, art installation, photography, and moving image become ways to capture the aesthetic of the alternative.
Artist Laimdota Malle has created an installation for the exhibition “Fragments and Imprints / Commanders’ Night II,” combining drawing, sculpture, and animation. The work focuses on the human body as a carrier of history and experience. At the same time, archive materials are transformed into illustrations, animations, and spatial forms, revealing the documental archive as a fluid, transformable structure.
The ISSP graduate alliance “Kurss” participates in the exhibition with three artworks. “Regaze” includes a special viewing device that draws on 19th-century kinetoscope principles and offers access to a slow, ordinary video viewing, where domestic, everyday situations are placed at the centre of attention. “Zvērā” explores the desire of an individual to associate with an animal and be part of various subcultures. The third work - “07:04:18”, referring to Askolds Saulitis’ short film “Cafe de l’Opera,” involves the viewer, making them encounter their own reflection as part of the exposition.
Artists Anastasia Shneps-Shneppe and Rebecca Korn create a collaborative work - “Sabatettes”, which combines archive materials from the first “Alternative”, references to the 2ANNAS figures of Venus, and especially creates new artworks, including analog photographs, which have been dipped in the tributary of Sarkandaugava. The work creates an associative connection between archive, material, place, and mythology, while offering a reflection on the portrayal of women, the circulation of historical images, and the impressions of the alternative culture.
The exhibition’s curator is Kristiana Karklina, the producer is Emilija Paula Vilkarse, and the space designer is Aleksejs Belickis.
The exhibition’s opening event takes place on April 10th, 20:00, after which attendees are encouraged to join the festival’s opening event, also taking place in the RAA cultural space. Moreover, visitors are invited to tours guided by the curator and the artists, on April 12th, April 26th, May 3rd from 11:00 to 12:00. During the exhibition, several artist talks are intended to happen, in which attendees will be able to get a deeper understanding of the artworks, their creation process, and the intended meaning made by the artists.
The exhibition “ALTERNATĪVA: Traces from the Underground” will be displayed from April 10th to May 3rd in the cultural space RAA, creative factory Veldze, Matisa Street 8, Riga. Entrance is free of charge.
The exhibition’s opening times:
- April 11th and April 12th: 12:00–20:00
- April 15th, April 16th, April 17th: 16:00–20:00
- April 18th and April 19th: 12:00–20:00
- April 22nd, April 23th, April 24th: 16:00–20:00
- April 25th, April 26th: 12:00–20:00
- April 28th, April 29th: 16:00–20:00
- May 1st, May 2nd, May 3rd: 12:00–20:00
The 30th Riga International Short Film Festival 2ANNAS and the exhibition “ALTERNATĪVA: Traces from the Underground” are financially supported by the Latvian State Culture Capital Foundation and the Riga City Council.